"Development Advocacy and the Dilemmas of Co-Financing"

Abstract

Observers of the EU’s development cooperation policy have noted that the EU has increasingly focused attention on wealthier developing nations and the near-abroad, promoted neoliberal approaches to development, and subordinated development objectives to foreign and security policy considerations. These trends in development policy have drawn attention away from the world’s poorest countries and have limited the poverty eradication orientation of EU policy. This paper examines how the way the European development advocacy network has been integrated into the EU’s political system has shaped the ability of development NGOs to influence the direction that EU development policy has recently taken. The analysis suggests that the development network’s role as an intermediary between the European Commission and NGOs seeking funding for project implementation has led the network to concentrate on its administrative functions at the expense of its advocacy work.